this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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How does it NOT discriminate? Racial coding exists and if you don't believe it exists then you're a racist.
I mean it has clearly racist origins, but I've never actually heard it used in a racist manner in real life.
At least where I was, there were basically zero Asians, "ricers" were (typically but not exclusively) Japanese cars that were customized terribly, as someone else mentioned, all show and no go. You could have American ricers too.
The owners, the "rice boys", were pretty much all white guys.
"My white friends and I used a racist term for each other that implicitly compares their cars to Asian ones perjoratively" is not necessarily the win you think it is.
When I was in seventh grade a classmate offered me a pull off a cigarette which I took. He then told me I had N***** lipped it. Does that magically become not racist as shit because we were both white and he used it to make fun of me?
Well, that's not at all what I said. Japanese compact cars were generally pretty cool and affordable in a way most similar small American cars were not, so of course they get customized a ton more that their American equivilents.
The people who actually made their cars perform were the racers, those who did the truly terrible mods were the ricers.
Yes, racist due to stereotyping. But it was more wordplay for insulting the taste of the person in question in comparison to the racers, not their ethnicity or the origin of their car. Bad taste is pretty universal. And as with pretty much anything in language, people can and clearly have used it as a racial insult. I just don't think that was it's origin.
I am really amused it has morphed into a more positive connotation with the *nix crowd, while still meaning essentially the same thing. Language truly is a living thing.